Idaho legislators returned for three days and adjourned. Here’s what they accomplished
Idaho legislators kept their promise Wednesday, having returned to the Capitol for just three days and then adjourning a record-breaking session that officially lasted 311 days.
Only one piece of legislation passed both the House and Senate: a joint memorial that states the Legislature’s opposition to President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
The House on Tuesday passed seven bills relating to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other public health restrictions. But after the bills never made it to the Senate floor, the House adjourned with a 37-24 vote.
Because the House recessed, and didn’t adjourn, in May, state representatives were required to return to session before the end of the year.
Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder said getting the public engaged in the legislative process was worth returning. He said he expects the bills to return for consideration when the next regular session begins in January.
“While it may be disappointing to some, I think the process worked,” Winder said Wednesday. “People were given the opportunity to participate. There’s just enough disagreement in the existing drafts that we could not find support to move them forward.”
Senate Joint Memorial 105 will be sent to Biden, Congress and Idaho’s congressional delegates. The legislation calls the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates “invasive.”
The Legislature believes “inoculation is a personal medical choice, and an attack on such choice is to chisel away at the freedom and liberty upon which this nation was founded,” the memorial states.
Winder said it sends “a very strong message.”
“The Senate joint memorial is milquetoast,” said House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, R-Star. “It’s just an excuse for them to leave and say they did something. We didn’t need it. It’s not necessary.”
Moyle, who voted against adjourning, told the Idaho Statesman that he believed Winder could have helped allay some of the public’s concerns about the House bills.
Moyle sponsored a bill on religious exemptions. The bill ultimately didn’t get two votes out of committee to move to the Senate floor.
“The fact that we came down here and didn’t get anything done here is concerning to me,” Moyle said, but added that he thought listening to public testimony was worth returning.
Few bills received a hearing in Senate committee
House members introduced a total of 29 pieces of legislation, while the Senate introduced six. But lawmakers who chair legislative committees have the discretion to decide whether to hold hearings for bills and when to schedule the meetings.
Three bills supported by the House were heard in the Senate State Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning: one that would have barred employers from questioning the sincerity of religious exemptions; one that prohibited employers from asking workers about COVID-19 vaccine status; and one that created broader workers’ compensation for vaccine-related injuries from an employer-mandated vaccine.
After nearly three and a half hours of discussion and public testimony, none of the bills were sent to the Senate floor. Most of the public speakers pushed for action from the Legislature to protect employees who don’t want to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Hammett, who chairs the Senate State Affairs Committee, didn’t hold votes for six of the bills that had been sent to her committee. Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, held no House Health and Welfare Committee meetings — a committee that had been assigned nine bills. Wood is a retired physician.
Lodge said she was satisfied with the joint memorial. Legislators “aren’t here to pass bad legislation,” she said.
“I didn’t want to be here at all,” Lodge told the Statesman. “I thought the House needed to meet, they needed to do what they needed to do. But we did not need to be here at this time of year.
“When we have seven weeks, work on these issues,” she said, referring to the regular session at the start of the year.
Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, co-sponsored the workers’ compensation bill on vaccine-related injuries and crafted another bill that would have barred employers from having vaccine mandates. Both bills were supported by the House but didn’t make it to the Senate floor.
“I am grateful the House and Senate reconvened and we were able to debate the important vaccine mandate issues,” Skaug said in a statement sent by text. “I am deeply and personally disappointed no bills have been passed to help workers who are losing their jobs.”
Lodge pointed to an Idaho law, the Health Freedom Act, that she believes could help protect the state’s residents who don’t wish to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Sen. Abby Lee, R-Fruitland, a member of the Senate State Affairs Committee, also said the remedy for Idaho residents whose employers aren’t following state law is in the courts.
Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, said many Idaho residents don’t have the time or means to sue their employers.
Lodge also pointed to three multistate lawsuits that Idaho Gov. Brad Little has joined to stop the Biden administration from enforcing COVID-19 vaccine mandates — for health care workers, federal contractors and businesses with 100 or more employees. A U.S. appeals court put a temporary hold on the federal government’s mandates on private employers last week.
House censures Rep. Priscilla Giddings after ethics report
House members on Monday checked one item off a to-do list: voting on an ethics recommendation against a North Idaho lawmaker.
Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, was removed from a legislative committee over her actions when a sexual assault allegation came forward against a former Republican lawmaker.
House members on Monday voted 49-19 to censure Giddings after she shared a far-right outlet’s article that identified a 19-year-old legislative intern who accused former Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger of rape. Giddings was removed from the House Commerce and Human Resources Committee, which oversees laws around state employees.
Giddings said she didn’t regret any of her actions.
“I would not have done anything differently,” she said defiantly on Monday.
$2 million ‘federal overreach’ defense fund rejected
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Monday shot down a bill to create a “federal overreach” legal defense fund, something that was supported by Senate Republican leaders, after testimony against the measure. Opponents of the fund pointed to two legal defense funds that already exist. The bill was rejected in a 12-6 vote.
Keith Bybee from the Legislative Services Office told committee members that the constitutional defense fund has $1.1 million and the legislative defense fund has $3.7 million.
Ada County Commission Chairman Rod Beck, a former state senator, told committee members that they should use the constitutional defense fund to fight what they see as federal overreach — what it was initially intended for, Beck said — and to stop using it as a “slush fund” to hire outside legal counsel.
This story was originally published November 17, 2021 at 5:42 PM.
